Trees (falling), bees, hugel clover, Hooey & roaming rabbits. Oh, and lentil soup. Yummo.
FCL :: Day in the Life :: 11 Aug, 2018 (Hugelkultur Rabbit Habitat: Step 1, Building the Hugel)
Found a 6 pound cantaloupe in my compost bin, which motivated me to get off my butt and actually transplant 25 cantaloupe seedlings from the soil block greenhouse into the row garden.
Then, I got a wild hair and decided to build a hugelkultur-based rabbit habitat out in the woods, so I can start migrating my young rabbits out of their cages and back into a more natural setting.
Beautiful day. Forecasted thunderstorms have not arrived (yet).
New Day … Hooray!
After all of yesterday’s trials and tribulations … I got up this morning not defeated, but determined to enjoy this day … a new day … fresh, and with a positive attitude.
Obviously, I have my hands full managing this here farm thingy. I’ve only been at this for less than 2 years, so every day undoubtedly — and without fail — presents many new ‘lessons learned‘ and ‘teachable moments.’ Yesterday was rich with such experiences, but today may not. Even if it does … so be it. Onward. Upward.
This video covers my morning activities between first cup of coffee and breakfast (sweet Italian sausage, veggies, brown rice, eggs, feta cheese, basil). Got all the critters up, out, checked, fed and watered, and run threw a few ‘snake drills‘ because of all the snake activity this week. 😉
Enjoy.
P.S. OBVIOUSLY (and no surprise) … the 7 1/2 shot was way more effective vs. the snake (target) than was the 000 buck. Onboard my ranch gun (Taurus/Rossi Circuit Judge carbine) I carry 7 1/2 shot (snakes), 000 buck (coyotes, short range), .45 Colt (coyotes, long range), and PDX1 (biped trespassers). 😉
P.S.S. And NO, I didn’t shoot the two ‘chickens’ beneath the ‘snakes.’ They just did what I taught all my chickens to do when I engage predators in their vicinity … drop, cover and bug-the-f*ck-OUT (i.e. beat feet).
Lost & Found: A Positive Thinking Exercise
There’s actually an interesting back story here, but now’s not the time.
Two days ago, while running the drag harrow over the SHTF “contingency garden” plot, I had a shackle on the pole boom implement behind the tractor come apart and fall off. I found the shackle just sitting on top of the dirt, but the clevis pin was MIA.
Sometimes, little shit like that drives me nuts. While I could have just jumped on Amazon.com and bought a new shackle, I instead decided to dust off the metal detector and find the damn pin.
Well over 10,000 sq.ft. to search! That is challenging enough, but even MORE challenging was the volume of other metal objects I was discovering in the dirt. Numerous old, antique things. Horseshoes, plow blades, bridle hardware, old handmade nails, etc.
THANKFULLY, I just found the clevis pin, about 30% through my search area. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was pretty close to where I found the shackle. However, I assumed the pin could have gotten hung up in the drag harrow and towed just about anywhere in the plot.
This was, essentially, a positive thinking exercise for me. Not going to get into the woo-woo B.S. here, but there’s really something to be said for getting positive and staying positive.
Long Day of Woodlot Thinning and Log Skidding
Woke up, had coffee, did my “situational awareness” routine (scanning online resources), then decided to get to work on the woodlot thinning project. About 8 hours later, Jacuzzi time, then early to bed. LONG day.
Rigged the boom implement to ‘choke’ a bunch of smaller limbs and saplings to see how well it would ‘skid’ them. Worked great.
Then, choked and skidded a much larger load to test the boom lifting capacity. Not even close to maximum lifting capacity.
Felled and skidded the first few roughly 10 inch diameter trees. Limbed them, then lifted them with log tongs mounted to the end of the boom. Again, easy work.
Maneuvering the long logs out of the woods, around the barn, through pasture gates, and into the terminal area for processing into firewood was really quite easy, as the tongs articulate in two axes to allow the log to be directionally steered.
I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened. A big ass tree starts to fall, then gets hung up in a set of relatively small branches above, which arrests the fall. Frustrating, to say the least. Dangerous too. I end up having to choke the bottom of the log and pull it out with the boom with a LONG length of chain, because you never know which direction the tree will actually fall.
Piling up the logs out in the big pasture next to the burn pit, to be further processed into firewood and/or wood chips.
Tried my hand at doing a few “plunge cuts.” First you cut the front notch, then you run the chainsaw bar straight into and through the tree. Once through, you clean up the “hinge” and then work backwards to leave just a small “back strap” opposite the direction of intended fall. In this case, I guess my hinge wasn’t far enough back, and the tree sat back and pinned the saw blade. Used a rope and Trucker’s Hitch knot to pull the tree off the saw bar so I could pull it out.
I’m still a novice tree feller, learning as I go. I’m getting better at falling trees according to plan (e.g. direction of fall), but still about half the time the tree falls off target. In this case, two consecutive cuts fell the exact opposite direction of intention, and went right through the pasture fence top rails. I think I was getting both physically and mentally tired, so I pretty much put the saw away after these two SNAFUs, before someone got hurt.
